REPORT FROM:

Memorial Medical Center

Memorial Medical Center remains closed, but no longer surrounded by water.  The administration has announced that the hospital is not likely to reopen for six or more months.

“Luckily we had only two transplants on the ward at the time of the hurricane,” said Dr. Todd Roberts, medical director for the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program.  “One was an allogeneic transplant who had engrafted and was scheduled for discharge but was kept in the hospital for the hurricane.  The second was an autologous transplant who had his stem cell infusion the day after the hurricane because he had already undergone his preparative regimen. 

“These patients were evacuated by helicopter after the levees broke and the city flooded.  To this day we do not know where the two patients went, as is the case with many of our patients who require specialized care post transplant,” he said.

“However, slowly, patients are making contact and they have been scattered near and far.  Many do not have homes to return to.  Although the hospital has no power, the administrative support staff at Memorial have worked tirelessly to maintain liquid nitrogen levels for our cryopreserved stem cells, many of which belong to patients awaiting transplant.”

Dr. Roberts said that much credit should go to Tenet Healthcare Corporation, the medical center’s parent corporation, for evacuating both patients and staff when there was no rescue from local, state or federal agencies.  “The patients and staff endured days of no power and temperatures above 100, and the threat of looters and gangs surrounding the hospital.  One nurse was robbed at gunpoint while walking her dog prior to the flooding.  There are many stories of courage and humility even now emerging,” he said.

Hospital in a Bowl

The 317-bed Memorial Medical Center was among the worst hit by the flood.  It sits northwest of the Garden District at the bottom of the New Orleans “bowl.”  More than 1,800 people were stranded at the hospital: 260 patients, about 500 employees and hundreds of family members of patients who had come to the hospital to ride out the storm.

In the early hours on Monday, it looked as if the hospital had survived with minimal damage.  Winds had shattered some windows and there was pooled water around the complex.  Municipal electrical power was gone but the back-up generators were operating.

Then the levee ruptured and the water level started rising.  “It was terrifying to see it rise so quickly.  We didn’t know where it was going to stop,” said L. Rene Goux, medical center CEO.  “We were able to move our food and other supplies up to the higher floors so at least we were able to feed people.  We also moved all of our patients up to the higher floors.  As the water continued to rise, we were completely cut off.

“Conditions at the hospital deteriorated rapidly.  There was no plumbing.  The toilets were overflowing.  The stench was overwhelming.  None of us had been able to bathe for four or five days.  The smell of sewage was nauseating and it was unbearably hot.  We started breaking windows to give our patients some ventilation,” he said.

Four-Day Ordeal 

The ordeal lasted for four anguished days.  During the last two days there was no electrical power of any kind for ventilators, dialysis machines or heart-rate monitors.

Exhausted nurses and physicians squeezed handheld ventilators for patients who could not breathe.  Nurses and family members, including children, stood for hours fanning patients by hand and bathing them with bottled water to make them more comfortable.  Temperatures indoors rose to nearly 110 degree.

Memorial employees managed to prepare an abandoned landing pad on top of a parking garage for use as a heliport.  The elevators were not working, so patients had to be carried up as many as eight floors to the rooftop helipad or down to boats.

“With no government help available, Tenet hired a fleet of private helicopters to evacuate our patients,” Mr. Goux said.

“There were about 30 of us left at the end,” he said.  “We spent the night on the rooftop waiting for the helicopters to return in the morning.  There was a huge explosion in the city, with flames shooting 1,000 feet into the air.  We could see looters in some of the buildings nearby. We could hear gunshots in other parts of the city.
 
"When the helicopters landed, we all stood up and applauded.  At that point, we realized that we had pulled this off – we had evacuated all of our patients and employees and we had survived.”  Not a single living patient was left in the hospital.

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